Despite its massive annual federal budget deficits and national
debt, the American superpower continues to meddle in faraway
countries that pose little direct threat to U.S. national security.
Examples of those nanny-like interventions have recently occurred in
Syria and South Sudan.

The U.S. Pentagon and State Department, having learned the wrong lessons
from post-American-invasion Iraq, are now planning for a post-Assad
Syria.
Undeterred by that previous mess, U.S. planners are busily
concocting grandiose plans to remodel Syria’s society, security,
economy, and political system — despite the objection of the
Syrian opposition to foreign “transition plans.”
According to TheNew York Times, Rafif Jouejati, a
spokesman for a network of Syrian activists, said, “What we
don’t want to do is descend into the total chaos that Iraq
did. I don’t think we want the United States to impose
lessons learned here.” But those alleged lessons from Iraq are
exactly what U.S. officials are trying to implore the Syrian rebels
to learn. The officials are cautioning the Syrian opposition in
the post-Assad era to avoid dismantling the military, police, and
government agencies — in order to avoid the security vacuum and
interruption of government services that caused the chronic
rebellion in Iraq.

Such management by exhortation might have to do for U.S.
planners, given the fact that this time they’ll have a plan
but may not have an occupation force on the ground to enforce it
(providing President Obama’s pledge of overt military
nonintervention holds up). In Iraq, the U.S. had an occupation
force but insufficient postwar planning. Bureaucracies usually
commit compensatory errors as perceived lessons learned from
previous errors. The compensatory error in this case seems to be
postwar planning even with no resources or armed force to implement
it.

Some hawks are loudly criticizing Obama for not giving the Syrian
opposition enough resources to carry out U.S. planning (making the
herculean assumption that the Syrian opposition would not just take
the resources while resisting implementation of a foreign plan).
Of course, the real lesson from Iraq is the difficulty of imperially
remodeling foreign societies to American liking and the futility and
costliness of even trying.

Worse, even if the United States had a postwar plan and the
resources to implement it, the entire enterprise might be
counterproductive. If current U.S. policy toward Syria is any
indication, that will be the case. Most U.S. officials have dire
predictions of post-Assad chaos fueled by greater ethnic, sectarian,
and tribal tensions than in Iraq. Yet increasing U.S. and foreign
overt and covert assistance to the rebels has encouraged them to try
to unify and overthrow Assad rather than seek some sort of
compromise or power-sharing with him. Sometimes, the U.S.
government can be its own worst enemy.

In Africa’s South Sudan, which recently gained its
independence from Sudan after a brutal civil war that killed
millions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly twisted the
arm of the country’s president to reach a deal to pay greater
sums to Sudan for transporting via pipeline the oil South Sudan
pumps out of the ground. South Sudan had cut off oil
production — thus further impoverishing both countries and
threatening to reignite war between them — to get Sudan to lower its
oil pipeline transit fees. The two sides were far apart in
negotiations until the day after Clinton appeared in South Sudan,
browbeat the South Sudanese president to reach a deal, and said, “We
need to get those resources flowing again.” The next day,
miraculously, South Sudan raised substantially the amount it was
willing to pay Sudan, and an agreement between the two countries was
reached.

Despite the oil (only a small portion of the world’s market), the United States has no real national security
interest in either of these nations; but Clinton interceded in their
oil dispute because the United States had previously intervened,
during the George W. Bush administration, to end the civil war and
broker South Sudan’s independence. The U.S. thinking seemed
to be that the original outcome had to be preserved or U.S. prestige
would suffer. Yet, the next time to the two feuding countries have
a dustup — likely over territorial disputes on their common
border — the United States again probably will feel the need to
intervene because even more U.S. prestige will be on the line.

Thus, one American intervention begets another. To avoid
getting enmeshed in quagmires — one step at a time — in areas in the
world not strategic to U.S. security, the United States should rely more
on regional powers and organizations, such as the Arab League and
the African Union, to ensure peace and stability.

20120411057 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Feland%2F2012%2F08%2F07%2Fquagmires-are-often-just-a-few-steps-away%2FQuagmires+Are+Often+Just+a+Few+Steps+Away2012-08-08+06%3A00%3A52Ivan+Elandhttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012041105 to “Quagmires Are Often Just a Few Steps Away”

[…] Quagmires Are Often Just a Few Steps AwayAntiwar.comDespite its massive annual federal budget deficits and national debt, the American superpower continues to meddle in faraway countries that pose little direct threat to U.S. national security. Examples of those nanny-like interventions have recently … […]

Mr Eland makes good points in this piece but I suspect what is guiding US foreign policy is more than just hubris or stupidity. Ulterior motives can be detected in every major US intervention going back as least as far as the 1890s when Wall Street teamed up with Washington to start a war with Spain in order to acquire her empire. General Smedley Butler was right, "war is a racket." It is waged by governments in order to enrich the banksters. The banksters always get rich from war because they make the loans which finance the slaughter. US entry into WWI was all about bailing out the Wall Street banks which had underwritten the Anglo-French war effort. The war also resulted in explosion in federal debt, interest on which the banks made a killing. I suspect US meddling in Africa, Middle East, and Central Asia today is mostly about trying to maintain or establish captive markets, forestalling China's ascendency, and preventing the development of the so called Third World. Precipitating or managing civil wars can be seen as method of manipulating commodity prices. And millions die as a result, well, that's just war. Henry Kissinger wrote about this sinister strategy in 1974.

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